Hi everyone, I hope you all had a great week. For those who don’t know me, my name is Kristen and I am a junior undergraduate working in the Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials lab. I recently became in charge of updating our website, and I realized that a great way to keep people informed on our research would be to have regular lab updates.
Monthly updates will be brought to you by graduate and undergraduate students alike, shedding light on what it is we do here on a weekly basis.
Our first item of the day is welcoming one of our rotating graduate students, Allison Moses! Allison is a returning terp, having completed her bachelors in bioengineering in the A. James Clark School of Engineering, and is now back to receive her PhD. A rotation in various labs at the beginning of a PhD program allows graduate students to explore a variety of research before deciding what area to pursue. The other graduate students have been showing her all the equipment we have and describing the research interests that can be explored here.
Robert has been working hard to prepare for his dissertation defense next Wednesday (10/4). A defense is the last step any graduate student needs to complete to PhD. This is where they present the work they have done over the past five years and show how they completed their thesis in front of a committee of professors. The PhD candidate must “defend” their work to the committee to prove they made a significant difference in their field.
Ryan and Pieper have an inventive way to make sure no one tempers with the heat settings of the hotplate while producing GelMA. GelMA is an engineered gelatin-based material that is very versatile for tissue engineering, drug delivery, and 3D printing. It is prepared through simple synthesis of gelatin with methacrylic anhydride (MAA). While GelMA is in a dialysis bag floating in a beaker of water on a hot plate, it is very important that it’s temperature stays regulated. Else, it will denature and be deemed unusable. Pieper and Ryan decided to address the temperature issue by 3D-printing a cover for the temperature knob. Once the temperature is right, a cover can be placed over the knob to keep anyone from accidentally changing the settings.
Amal printed NAC structure with embedded vasculature using 2 materials. She also redesigned and 3D printed an in vitro bioreactor to culture bioprinted NACs. Bioreactors are used to grow cells. Our lab has its very own perfactory 3D printer that is able to make small scale bioreactors for use within our labs and for anyone else who needs them.
